Our story
A shop, not a website with a warehouse behind it.
A Moroccan family opened Chaouen Market on a side street in Shabyia 11 because there was nowhere in Abu Dhabi to buy the things they cooked with at home. Not the tourist version — the everyday version.
The name
Named after the blue city.
Chefchaouen sits in the Rif mountains, and every wall in it is painted blue. Not a marketing colour — a real one, mixed with lime and repainted each spring, which is why the bottom of a wall is always deeper than the top.
The shop is named after it, and painted the same colour. That is the whole idea: this is a piece of a particular place, not a generic idea of Morocco.
How it is stocked
We buy it ourselves.
Nothing here is drop-shipped. Every fortnight a pallet leaves Casablanca and lands in Mussafah, and what is on it was chosen by someone who knows the difference between argan oil that was cold pressed and argan oil that was heated to get more out of the kernel.
When something sells out on this site, it is genuinely gone until the next pallet. We would rather show you an empty shelf than send you something we did not choose.
Sold by weight
Eighteen bins, one scale, no packets.
Along the counter there are eighteen glass bins of spice and dried herb, each with a blue card showing the price per kilo. You point, we weigh it in front of you, and it is ground the same hour. Order online and exactly the same thing happens.
- 18
- bins along the counter
- 14
- days between pallets
- 24h
- to anywhere in the UAE
- 9:30
- open, every single day
Named after the blue city
Chefchaouen, in the Rif mountains — the walls are painted, and so is the shop.
Chosen by us in Morocco
A pallet leaves Casablanca every fortnight. Nothing here is drop-shipped.
Weighed out by hand
Eighteen bins along the counter, ground the hour you order it.
Abu Dhabi · Al Ain
The shop is still the point.
You can order everything here and have it tomorrow. But the shop is open from half nine in the morning until eleven at night, every day, and it is better in person. Come and smell the spices. Pick your own tagine — no two of the painted ones are the same. Someone will make you tea.